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France: Traditional provinces - Heraldic and vexillological perspective

Historical and modern status of the provincial banners of arms
List of the traditional provinces
The provincial banners of arms on sugar cubes

See also:

France
Clickable map of provinces
France: Traditional provinces - Historical perspective
France: Modern administrative divisions

Historical and modern status of the provincial banners of arms

The French provincial arms are an heraldist's headache. The provincial arms were "officialized" by Hozier's Armorial Général, but some of these arms were imposed, for instance for Franche-Comté:

Ecartelé, au premier et quatrième, de sable à la fasce d'or; au second et au troisième, d'or à un pal de sable (quartered I and IV sable a fess or II and III or a pale sable).

The provincial arms were suppressed after the French Revolution and resurfaced at the end of the XIXth century, especially in Lorraine in the 1850s. More research is required to know exactly when the provincial arms reappeared in the different provinces. It is clear that such arms were used on postcards, posters, cards offered with food products etc. in the beginning of the XXth century, but without a general pattern of use.

The heraldists Robert Louis and Jacques Meurgey de Tupigny attempted to clarify the situation in the years 1940-1950. They published in 1952 a book entitled Les Armoiries des provinces françaises : historique de chaque province. Compositions graphiques enluminées modernes d'après les documents anciens (Girard, Barrère et Thomas). The arms showed in that book have been used to design the modern provincial banners of arms, although it is established that the provinces never had such flags during the Ancient Regime.

Therefore, the reference for the modern provincial arms is Louis and Meurgey's preferences, at least when no standard arms were widely recognized. Louis and his daughter Mireille were very good lobbyists who pushed their creations very efficiently via heraldic maps, illustrations in dictionaries (for instance four plates of "genuine provincial arms" in the Quillet Encyclopaedia), reviews, posters etc.

Pascal Vagnat, 1 May 2003

List of the traditional provinces

Each page includes links towards the Region(s) and department(s) whose territory(ies) overlap(s) the former provincial territory, the history of the province and the explanation of its banner of arms, if known.

Ivan Sache, 8 October 2002

The provincial banners of arms on sugar cubes

A sugarcube series decorated with the French provincial banners of arms was released in 2002 by the French sugar house Béghin-Say.
Unwrapped, each paper has dimension 64 x 47 cm. It contains two lumps of sugar. This is type B2 according to the classification elaborated by the Club Français des Glycophiles.

This series is partially shown on Gwel's website. The image shows the coat of arms of the following provinces and pays:

1st row: Angoumois - Anjou - Armagnac (Gascogne) - Artois - Aunis - Auvergne - Lower-Alsace - Béarn - Beaujolais (Lyonnais)
2nd row: Berry - Bourbonnais - Burgundy - Bresse (Burgundy) - Brittany - Bugey (Burgundy) - Champagne - Comminges (Gascogne) - County of Foix
3rd row: County of Nice - Comtat Venaissin - Corsica - Dauphiné - Upper-Alsace - Nivernais - Normandy - Orléanais - Pays Basque
4th row: Périgord (Guyenne) - Picardie - Poitou - Provence - Quercy (Guyenne) - Roussillon - Saintonge - Savoy - Touraine

Not shown: Flandre - Franche-Comté - Gascogne - Pays de Gex (Franche-Comté) - Guyenne - Ile-de-France - Languedoc - Limousin - Lorraine - Lyonnais - Maine - Marche - Maurienne (Savoie) - Navarre.

All the provinces listed above are included in the series. I guess the pays have been selected to reach the number of 50, but other could have been added (for instance, Maurienne was selected in Savoy but not Chablais, Faucigny, Genevois and Tarentaise).

Ivan Sache, 29 December 2002